Internally displaced people in Colombia: Victims in permanent transition

by Dan Van Ness

I have just received a copy of a research study on the peace negotiations in Colombia: Internally displaced people in Colombia: Victims in permanent transition: Ethical and political dilemmas of reparative justice in the midst of internal armed conflict by Sandro Jiménez Ocampo, et al.

From 2004 to 2007, the Colombian Government conducted peace negotiations with paramilitary groups. One of the issues negotiated had to do with the claims of people who had been killed or forcibly displace from their land, lands that were held by the combatants when the negotiations began.

Forced displacement and deaths continued during the course of the negotiations, creating new claims. While reparation to victims was supposed to be a prominent outcome to the negotiations, the difficulties of negotiating peace in the course of a violent conflict together with the absence of the victims of displacement from the negotiation meant that there were claims of serious inadequacies with the results.

This study is a serious and important contribution to the literature on reparation. It describes the historical context of the negotiations, the law on which the negotiations were carried out, how the law was interpreted by the Government and why, how the Government's subsequent response to the victims of displacement was determined, the range and kinds of reparation those victims wanted and needed, and lessons learned from the results.

The authors conclude that "the preventive actions and those for reparation should be focused on:

Policies to redistribute the land and land reform policies that will cut down on the monopoly, single crop farming and anti-ecological and illicit practices. It is clear that if the land is not included as a core issue in reparation, the victims will have no possibilities for their decent, sustainable return....

Judicialization and punishment for those responsible.... Any attempt at return or reestablishment will be seriously threatened if the masterminds and the actual perpetrators go free carrying out their criminal actions [while victims' attempts]turn out to be prevented by the persistent threats of old and new armed structures....

Comprehensive actions of reparation must contemplate economic strategies aimed at sustainable local and regional development....

The displaced have to be recognized as individual and collective political actors. They cannot be treated as welfare recipients....